Show Notes
In this episode we explore why we both have huge hoards of unused and partially used notebooks, and what makes us crack open a new notebook. You can find videos, photos and a deeper dive into this topic in the newsletter. In this episode: Helen is still searching for her full collection of mechanical pencils. The Penac Protti goes down well at work, but Rob ends up with pencil all over him at work, and refuses to share his doodles with his work colleagues. Rob describes Helen’s notebook storage unit with remarkable accuracy. Helen defines her key purpose for using a new notebook. Rob goes down the emotional route for deciding on using a new notebook (Clarity, Excitement, Despair). Rob and Helen both commit to doing a video of their notebook stash Rob has 12 notebooks on the go, all originally started with a purpose, but they get morphed as he never has the right notebook, in the right place, at the right time. Helen’s least transient work is creative writing - hence her notebook has a clear purpose long term. Rob thinks pairing down to one notebook is the answer, but then the stack of spare notebooks taunt him Rob finds a fellow freak who loves pens and pencils but has no time for notebooks or paper. Helen realises she will never have enough projects for all of her notebooks Rob sees a business opportunity to sell his half-used notebooks Helen is off to London with her daughter and visiting a well-known stationery store. We mention these other Stationery Freaks casts: Vinted and Stationery Little red notebook mentioned in this cast on goal setting. The dichotomy of minimalism and stationery freakness. Maria Le Van notebooks and London stationery shops. The perfect mechanical pencil. Find out more in the newsletter. Thanks for listening. Rob & Helen
More from Stationery Freaks
After a few months away — and a very welcome "petition of one" from Stacy in Florida — Rob and Helen are back. Rob has been building a public commonplace: twenty-five years of learning, typed onto index cards (possibly breaking his typewriter in the process) and slowly taking over his studio wall. Helen has been redistributing her notebook collection to a room of grateful authors, which may or may not count as cheating in the great notebook challenge. See original hoarding cast here and a revisit to the challenge of using notebooks here. Along the way: why old publishing offices were built around attention rather than productivity, a typewritten daily planning ritual that's quietly replaced Todoist, the strange magnetism of Midori paper, a beautiful Japanese storage haul, giving away index cards to parents and why the whole world seems to be drifting back to analogue. It's like old times. Which is rather the point of the cast. It's good to be back. If you'd like to see images, and more about the show - check out the companion newsletter to this episode. https://stationeryfreaks.substack.com/
In this episode of Stationery Freaks, Rob and Helen dig into the messy, essential world of scrap notes: desk pads, Post-its, legal pads, envelopes, voice memos, and the “grab whatever’s nearby” capture habit. They explore the real question beneath the stationery: what’s the process for turning a quick note into something useful — and what happens when your capture system becomes a pile of open loops.
It’s our first Stationery Freaks episode of 2026, and we’re going deep on goal setting, as we usually do for the first cast of the year.
It’s the last Stationery Freaks episode before Christmas, and after a slightly chaotic month we’re back with a free-form catch-up full of notebook temptation, planning experiments, and advent calendar joy. Helen reviews two very premium stationery advent calendars — Martha Brook(s) and Tom’s Studio — including what you actually get, which one feels more “decorative vs functional,” and the one item she absolutely refuses to touch (again). Rob shares his new structured SmartPlanner time-blocking experiment (and why he’s moved from pen to pencil), an everyday-carry bag confession featuring nine notebooks, and an early idea he’s calling The Wallpaper Method: learning notes on a giant scroll. We also chat about “analog wellbeing,” why January is peak notebook season, end-of-year reflection (hello, Collins ledger), and what we’ll be tackling in the first episode of 2026.